V. I. Lenin

Reply To A Letter From The Joint Provisional Committee For

The Communist Party Of Britain[1]

Written:8 July, 1920First Published:Published in English inThe Call(London) No. 224, July 22, 1920; First published in Russian in the Fourth Edition of theCollected Works;Published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965,Volume 31, page 2021Translated:Julius KatzerTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

I have received a letter from the Joint Provisional
    Committee for the Communist Party of Britain, dated June 20, and,
    in accordance with their request, I hasten to reply that I am in
    complete sympathy with their plans for the immediate organisation
    of a single Communist Party of Britain. I consider erroneous the
    tactics pursued by Comrade Sylvia Pankhurst and the Workers’
    Socialist Federation, who refuse to collaborate in the
    amalgamation of the British Socialist Party, the Socialist Labour
    Party and others to form a single Communist party. Personally I am
    in favour of participation in Parliament and of affiliation to the
    Labour Party, given wholly free and independent communist
    activities. I shall defend these tactics at the Second Congress of
    the Third International on July 15, 1920 in Moscow. I consider it
    most desirable that a single Communist party be speedily organised
    on the basis of the decisions of the Third International, and that
    such a party should establish the closest contact with the
    Industrial Workers of the World and the Shop Stewards’
    Committees, in order to bring about a complete merger with them in
    the near future.

[1]“Reply to a Letter from the Hoint Provisional Committee for
    the Communist Party of ritain” was broadcasted and published
    in English inThe Call(No. 224, July 22, 1920), organ of
    the British Socialist Party. The reply was also read to the
    Congress of British Communists, which took place on July 31-August
    1, 1920.—Editor